USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Brookline > History of the town of Brookline, Massachusetts > Part 29
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Walter Channing studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School, and devoted himself primarily to the study of mental diseases, a field in which he had the widest opportunities and won recognition as a great leader.
It is hardly possible to estimate the influence on the town of such citizens, whose authoritative judgment, immediately available, on matters of public importance which came within their respective fields, assured Brookline such wise guidance in so many directions. On a question of parks and planting, there could be no more valuable opinions than those of Olmsted or Sargent. When the town was puzzling over the difficulties of securing a water supply, or even when the question was no more vexatious than that of replacing a bridge, it was the usual thing to put Edward S. Philbrick on the committee, which thus obtained without cost the advice of an engineer of the first rank. And so in other fields. Those leaders of the community who were animated by the spirit of progress were sound-minded men, convinced of the importance of acting only on the basis of thorough study and investigation. When they sought able opinions, it was seldom necessary to go beyond the town limits, for Brookline's charms had attracted eminent men in nearly every line.
THE CHARLES SPRAGUE SARGENT ESTATE
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THE JUST PRIDE OF BROOKLINE
There resulted a type of administration that excelled in nearly every direction, and if there were those disposed to re- gard this as the expensive era of the town's history, there was one leading authority on local government who stood ready to argue its economy. A significant paragraph by Alfred D. Chandler is worth quoting here, as a summary of the economic picture near the close of the century: I
It is an interesting fact that the average rate of taxation in Brookline during the past ten years, the period of its most extraordinary growth and boldest improvements, is less than for the preceding ten years. The average rate from 1882 to 1892 was $10.87 per $1000. The average rate from 1872 to 1882 was $12.01 per $1000. The town debt has increased during the past ten years 43 1/2 per cent; while the town valuation in the same period has increased 113 3/5 per cent. Of course, with the town's growth, come added expenses and demands each year. But Brookline has recognized the fact that the town will grow whether it is encouraged so to do or not, and that as between a large population ill prepared to meet modern municipal wants, and a population and sur- roundings which are strong and attractive, the latter are preferable. To meet the growing demands of such a town, new capital must be brought in and such inducements offered as will attract and retain persons having capital. A higher rate of taxation and a less efficient government would follow a diminution of public income; hence the town aims to draw within its limits strong and active classes.
In this would seem to be a kind of diagram of the vicious circle with its vice removed: like begetting like, and parent and pro- geny representing, more and more, just what an ideal town would wish to be.
Brookline was, with abundant reason, a proud town. Its people took pride in its natural beauty, in its municipal achieve- ments, and in its public services from the new waterworks down to the horse-car line. In this connection it may be interesting to read a reminiscent letter written in the summer of 1932 by a pioneer and gold prospector of the old west, John Charles
I From 'Brookline, A Study in Town Government,' in New England Magazine, August 1893, p. 794.
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Fremont McGriff, who remembers Brookline in the early eighties:
I had heard about this Brookline horse car line from my partner, who was born in Nantucket, I believe. At the time we were there, his mother and sister lived in Brookline, so we frequently went out to visit them by this line that the citizens were so proud of. Well, if they were, they had a right to be, for it was a splendid outfit, from trackage to cars, horses, harness, and in fact all equipment. The horses were the main feature, all matched bays. It was said that the stablemen could turn them all out in a lot, go and pick out any two, and they'd be a well matched pair. They were always up on the bits and ready to go, for no lame or sore- footed ones were ever hooked up. These horses were all trained to slow up when the driver gave them the word-and- line 'tip' to take on and let off passengers, and to go without a whip when they got the word. It was said that the man- agement took pride in the claim that their company did not own any whips. They depended on first-class stock and plenty of good oats. The horses, their harness, and the cars were all clean and shining, and this was supposed to be the outstanding car line of the United States.
The town's social diversions were for the most part gracious and simple. Chamber music was a frequent form of enter- tainment in many homes of wealth. Parties and balls were never casual affairs. Winter horse-racing on Washington Street began annually after the first snow, and accounted for a large share of The Chronicle's local news items. Boys who enjoyed boating on Jamaica Pond in summer had abundant hills for winter coasting, and in time toboggan slides were built. A local paper recorded an incident at the opening of the first of these, when a town official who had been active in having it built was given the honor of taking the first coast. It seems that he got under way before his wife, who was expected to accompany him, had quite gained her seat. The printed report stated that he coasted down on the toboggan, while she 'slid down on her own responsibility.'
One wishes that people were as ready to leave record of their social experiences and intellectual adventures, as of their political proceedings. Sometimes it seems more instructive to
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know what they did with their leisure than how they put in their working hours.
The Chronicle did tell of 'one of our society young ladies' who wrote friends in New York 'that she had so far violated her conscience as to go to see Booth during Lent, and that the most alarming feature of it was, that she was afraid that she was glad that she went!' The story is probably somewhat apocryphal, but a New York correspondent is supposed to have commented:
Sorely tempted, she went To see Booth during Lent; And now she is shocked That she's glad that she went.
But this was, after all, a serious period of Brookline's history. The town was all but swallowed up by Boston, and escaped only after ten years' vigorous struggle. Then it embarked on an astounding career of expansion and modernization. Per- haps its citizens were, in fact, pretty thoroughly taken up with the work which made Brookline what it was at the turn of the century.
CHAPTER XII THE HERITAGE OF THREE CENTURIES
THE NEW POPULATION
THE modern generation has seen changes which threaten the character, and even the identity, of Brookline. What Boston could not accomplish politically in the 'seventies has, in large measure, come about physically in the last thirty years. Mere extension of the city limits so as to surround the town is not accountable for the substantial change that has taken place, but the growth of Boston as a center of population explains a great deal.
In 1630 Muddy River was the most convenient pasture land accessible to the peninsula. In 1730 Brookline was the nearest farming community. By 1830 it was becoming the favorite resort of Boston merchants who sought country homes near-by. Now it has been invaded by the builders of the vast apartment structures which alone make possible the modern concentra- tion of human life in limited areas.
Of course there are relics of what once was, particularly in the still rural southwestern part of the town. But broadly speaking, Brookline is within the city, and like the city, but not of the city.
Apartment dwellers who come home only to sleep may, it is true, be worthy citizens, but their interest in the community where they live is not the interest of the man who has a stake in the land. Even in the 'eighties The Chronicle published an article on 'Brookline as a Bedroom.' There are substantial names in Brookline still, and fine old estates, but the population now is preponderantly of those who cannot possibly have the town's affairs at heart as did most inhabitants a century, or even fifty years ago. Furthermore, it is a population which, by sheer numbers, has compelled a modification of the time-honored town meeting system, by the sacrifice of its most intimate feature - the direct voting of the individual citizen on every subject of community interest. Yet so much has been retained
DRUCE-CRAFT HOUSE ON THE DENNY FARM, NEWTON STREET Built 1660-70; taken down in 1902. Site opposite Golf Club
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of what has been cherished, that it is doubtful if the people of Brookline today would be more ready to merge their town with the surrounding city, than were their grandfathers sixty years ago. Indeed, in 1919, the selectmen were instructed by a vote of 193 to I, to oppose annexation to Boston.
CITY PROBLEMS
The twenty-year period ending in 1903 saw already upon the town the clear mark of the changes which were to charac- terize the new century. Population had increased, it was esti- mated, from 9270 to 25,000; and dwellings in about the same proportion, from 1280 to 3515, many of which were apartments or family hotels. Real estate values, under the influence of new building and the enhanced worth of the land where they stood, rose from about $15,000,000 to $60,000,000; while personal property increased from more than $16,000,000 to over $27,- 000,000, on a scale a trifle less than that of the population growth. Willy-nilly, Brookline was becoming citified.
One by one many of the gracious residences of a more ex- pansive day were replaced, some of them pulled down delib- erately, some destroyed by fire. The old house on the Denny farm on Newton Street, which Vincent Druce had built, probably between 1660 and 1670, and which had later come into the Craft family, was taken down where it stood in 1902. This was also the fate of the house built about 1715 by Deacon Samuel Clark on Walnut Street, then the Sherburne road. And the old Aspinwall home on Aspinwall Hill lacked only three years of a century when it came down in 1900. With the disappearance of these and other substantial homes, less old, it was already being said: 'In a score of years past, brick blocks, apartment houses, family hotels, and modern dwellings have been built, and present a striking contrast to the modest houses of the past, surrounded with trees and ample grounds and have robbed the town of its old-time rural appearance and beauty.'
In January, 1907, Rufus G. F. Candage, speaking of a num- ber of matters of current history at the annual meeting of the Brookline Historical Society, explained:
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Brookline being a nearby suburb of Boston, in the line of that city's overflow of population, within easy and convenient distance by steam and trolley, its fine streets, sidewalks, schools, water, police, town government, and low rates of taxation, all have contributed to the changes we have been considering. And though the old residents may lament that the town has lost its former rural charm; that apartments and apartment hotels have robbed it of its former desirabil- ity as a place of residence; that its population is not what it used to be - the changes have come and are to march on until its streets in the future will be faced with continuous blocks of buildings, become metropolitan in character and indistinguishable from the neighboring city in external ap- pearance, even if it preserves its municipal independence, as most good citizens of the present hope it may. Regret such changes as one may, it seems inevitable for them to occur, and all must bow and accept them with grace, the current being too strong to be stemmed or turned aside.
COOLIDGE CORNER
The influx of population was largely concentrated in the northern part of the town, particularly along Beacon Street and in the vicinity of Coolidge Corner. Commercial develop- ment began there in 1857 when the Coolidges built a store, the site of which was later occupied by the S. S. Pierce Com- pany. Previously the business section of the town had been confined to the Village section - the area along Washington Street and the beginning of Boylston Street. In 1912, the Whitney estate at Coolidge Corner was sacrificed to a block of stores and offices. That same year, Boylston Street, the old Worcester Turnpike, was widened to accommodate increasing traffic.
Construction continued, however, in the northern and western sections. The year 1913 saw the erection of 191 build- ings, including a number of apartment houses in the vicinity of Coolidge Corner. Of these Charles H. Stearns said, 'To the older and more conservative citizen these buildings are inter- lopers, in some instances destroying old and perhaps venerated houses to permit of their erection .... Indeed, Brookline is fast losing its suburban character and becoming urban, a fact
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which, though one may lament to see, must be inevitable con- sidering the rapid growth of our big neighbor.'
By 1915 the invasion of the automobile business had got under way; and in addition to the clustering of stores around Coolidge Corner, others were spreading out from the Village along Washington and Harvard Streets. The widening of Brighton Avenue, which became Commonwealth Avenue, and the introduction of trolley service, operated to develop the section of Brookline on the southerly side of that thoroughfare. Apartments and garages sprang up to cover the green mead- ows. Fine estates were subdivided by real estate promoters.
In 1919 an important change took place at Coolidge Cor- ner, when Ernest B. Dane purchased a substantial residence property and commenced erection of the splendid modern building of the Brookline Trust Company. Construction, temporarily suspended during the war, went forward with re- newed vigor as shown in the expenditure of over $3,000,000 for twenty apartment houses, forty single dwellings, and over a hundred garages, some of them large business structures. In 1920, some $2,500,000 was spent for 128 buildings, and in 1921, about $3,500,000 on 229 construction projects, more than half of them garages. But modernization received one set-back; Miss Julia Goddard's beautiful old home, Green Hill, came into the hands of an owner who was careful to restore and preserve much of its original charm.
MEASURES OF VALUE
Building permits for 1922 covered 72 stores, of which the town already had a surplus, 168 houses and apartment build- ings, 157 private and 17 public garages. An 800-room apart- ment hotel near Longwood station was assured. The Brook- line Savings Bank occupied its new quarters.
Perhaps the most tangible evidence of the growth and pro- sperity of a community is to be found in the record of its pro- perty valuation, its tax rate and its expenditures for municipal purposes. In Brookline all of these items have followed an almost steadily mounting curve. Thus, in 1900, property of a total value of about $78,000,000 was taxed at the rate of $10.20 per $1000; in 1910 the rate was $12.50 on more than
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$108,000,000. During the war years there was some diminu- tion in the total assessments, but in 1920 a tax of $17.30 was laid against property assessed at well over $103,000,000, and in 1930 the rate was $19.90 on more than $170,000,000.
Taken at ten-year intervals the municipal expenditures have mounted substantially. Thus, in 1900, they were about one and three quarters million dollars; in 1910 over two million; in 1920 in excess of three million, and in 1930 more than five and one half million. Furthermore, this increase in ex- penditure has been accompanied by an increase in municipal debt, which for the first twenty years of the century was held close to one and one half million dollars, but within recent years has reached a million dollars additional.
These years of phenomenal growth at length brought the belated protection of a zoning law, defining the sections of the town restricted to dwelling houses, and those in which apart- ments and business structures might be built. It was a law which in part reflected the resentment against the intrusion of unsightly stores in what were properly residential sections, and of course much of the damage which it sought to prevent had to occur before the law was demanded.
Evidently the full import of the threat of unrestricted build- ing was not felt until 1913, when for the first time a town plan- ning board began to be active. Its chairman was Frederick Law Olmsted, for Brookline continued to adhere to its time- honored custom of putting heavy municipal responsibility upon citizens of outstanding professional reputation. In its second report, published in 1915, the planning board included a score of illustrations from photographs taken in various parts of Brookline to emphasize the evils which must result from the unrestricted use of land by owners eager for profit. Apartment houses were being constructed as close as possible to the curb line and even where, on older residential streets, houses had originally been built with generous set-backs, stores were in some instances being obtruded between the old building line and the boundary of the property. It was pointed out that in some instances this policy was certain in time to be very ex- pensive for the town because secondary thoroughfares such as St. Paul Street and Aspinwall Avenue must eventually need
COOLIDGE CORNER IN 1887, LOOKING NORTH UP HARVARD STREET The Coolidge Brothers' store in center was on site of the S. S. Pierce building
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widening, and if buildings were constructed so close to the curb line that they must be destroyed, the expense might be prohibitive. This the board thought might all be prevented by the taking of adequate precautions.
Under the guidance of the planning board a policy with regard to building lines was evolved, by which set-backs vary- ing from five to twenty feet were specified for certain named streets. Subsequently, the business of planning was carried out much more elaborately with the establishment of zones within which the size and use of buildings were restricted in very exact terms. This law, subject to successive amend- ments, as circumstances seemed to require, has been the means of protecting purely residential sections of the town from com- mercial;intruders and of preventing the selfish use of property by landowners without æsthetic consideration for the immedi- ate neighborhood.
This protection of course was not achieved in time to prevent all of the evils against which it was designed. Some harm had already been done and could not well be undone, but the pol- icy of the town has been reduced to a code and a sufficient term of conformity to that code should make manifest in orderly fashion the far-sightedness of the distinguished board respon- sible for formulating it.
OVERSIZE TOWN MEETINGS
So impressive a change in population made inevitable a change in the system of town government. Census figures reported nearly 20,000 residents of Brookline in 1900; but there were almost 28,000 in 1910, 38,000 in 1920, and over 47,000 in 1930. Even without the extension of the suffrage to women, such a population must have resulted in an unwieldy town meeting.
Naturally, the meetings were attended only by a part of the voters, and often not a very large part unless matters of ex- ceptional interest were under discussion. Furthermore, the efficiency of the meeting had been enhanced in various ways, so that less and less time was consumed by its deliberations. Despite the fact that the town's business had increased enor- mously, there were actually less than half as many meetings
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per year at the close of the nineteenth century, as at its begin- ning. Business was expedited by the regular appointment of the Committee of Thirty to report on the articles in the war- rant; and this device for informing the meeting as a whole made prompt and intelligent voting easy.
Townsmen were not in any way bound by the report of the committee, but merely aided. Individual participation in the affairs of local government remained what it had always been. But as attendance grew, along with population, it transpired that the meetings were sometimes packed, especially when large appropriations were in the balance, by visitors from 'just across the line' who came to add their voices to the affirma- tive chorus. To obviate this, the town voted in 1901 to accept the General Court's 'Act relative to town meetings in the town of Brookline.' This provided for the use of a check list at the door for every town meeting, or an alternative of registering turnstiles. It further required that certain votes should, upon petition, be submitted for ratification at a subsequent town meeting, and prescribed processes to be followed.
But such a measure was at best a makeshift. There was increasing discussion of the possibility of a 'limited' town meet- ing, a system agitated for Boston as early as 1815, and strongly recommended for Brookline by Alfred D. Chandler in 1897. His idea was to divide the town into five wards and choose sixty men from each to make up the town meeting. This scheme gained little headway, however, and the first trial of such a method was made in June, 1906, by the city of New- port, Rhode Island.
Meanwhile Mr. Chandler had been making vigorous efforts to promote a plan which he believed essential to the good gov- ernment of the town that Brookline had become. In an address at Hyde Park in January, 1904, he said:
To the usual assumption that Brookline is a homogeneous community peculiar to itself, controlled by an educated plutocracy, is exempt from administrative trials, and is ex- posed to no labor questions and to no disturbing isms, so that its example offers little cheer to other municipalities, it should be said: That such views are far from sound, be- cause the real situation in Brookline, emphasized more and
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more each year, offers a stimulating precedent, its popula- tion being decidedly mixed, with a large 'laboring' element, and its aggregate wealth being controlled for the purposes of taxation, rather by the average man, by the poll-tax payers and small property-owners, than by a few plutocrats or by men of exceptional talents.
The speaker pointed out that the elasticity of the town form of government had permitted Brookline to develop systematic methods, improved accounting, and such a supervision as enabled the town to keep abreast of the times. He emphasized again that during the half-century preceding the influx of popu- lation, the enforced as well as voluntary subdivision of estates, had made the town quite different in its political complexion from what was commonly supposed.
Mr. Chandler cited statistics for 1902 which showed that the ten largest taxpayers in Brookline paid only a little over seven per cent of the taxes, the town ranking fourteenth in Massachusetts in that respect. For the same year the largest tax contribution of any one family or estate ran as high as thirty-seven per cent of the total tax in Dover and Wenham, and sixty-two per cent in Lancaster, while in Brookline it was only a little over two per cent. Thus the supposition of the dominance of great wealth was disproved.
A REMEDY PROPOSED
By a careful restriction of the town meetings to legal voters, Mr. Chandler argued, much disorder had been avoided of the kind which Governor Hutchinson described when he wrote in 1770 of the Boston town meetings, that although there were not 1500 legal voters in the town, there might be 3000 or 4000 in attendance. 'It is, in other words,' he said, 'being under the government of the mob. This has given the lower part of the people such a sense of their importance that a gentleman does not meet with what used to be common civility, and we are . sinking into perfect barbarism.'
Some such consequence Mr. Chandler believed he foresaw, if precautionary measures were not taken. He insisted that the fact 'that Brookline, or any other very large town - Boston, for instance, up to 1822, with 43,000 inhabitants - has not
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been seriously injured under the present happy-go-lucky un- limited town meeting system, is a matter of congratulation; but it is no justification for further delay to provide appro- priate legislation in Massachusetts to guard against the inev- itable.'
This exhaustive speech was in support of a proposed bill which provided for the division of towns having over 12,000 people into five or ten precincts, from each of which twenty- four voters were to be chosen as delegates or town meeting members, one third to serve for one year, one third for two years, and one third for three years; eight voters to be chosen from each precinct annually thereafter.
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